Review Summary: Is This Shit.
I remember when
Is This It hit the shelves. I was working at FYE. We had boxes and boxes of this smelly clunker. It smelled like someone pinched a foul loaf when the CD truck dropped off about a thousand copies of this crap. They were pushing this record like it was
Eat 'Em and Smile or
In Utero, I wish it was. This was a suspicious result for a supposed "organic new band" from the get go. I was overcome with a sense of nausea and boredom upon viewing the album cover, but I pressed on. My boss instructed us to keep the album playing 24/7. Apparently, the record industry had chosen The Strokes as their next "legitimate artist." Yet unlike previous designated torch bearers such as Mudvayne or Radiohead, even my fellow FYE coworkers agreed with me when I ranted about how The Strokes had seemingly not earned their stripes, so to speak. Nobody could figure out why we were supposed to like this stuff, and 20 years later, I'm still coming up blank.
When people call this album "post-punk" I'm assuming they mean this is what punk sounds like when it's post-menopausal, because this sure doesn't remind me of the punk rock we used to listen to on the streets. I was a skater in the 90s. I remember smoking ditch weed, running from the cops, spraypainting *** to Green Day and The Offspring. Then all of a sudden, The Strokes hit the scene looking like choir boys. I put this CD in the CD player at FYE and we all started laughing, it was like someone ripped a long fart to break up the monotony of the day except I would have rather heard and smelled that instead of The Strokes. The singer opened his mouth. Wow. I'm not a violent guy, first of all. I'm not someone you want to mess with, I have been known to stomp the crap out of a few people, but generally I'm a chillaxed sort of character. Hearing The Strokes gave me violent urges. I wanted to beat the *** out of this dumb***.
There is supposedly a rock band of sorts playing on this album, but I can't hear them. Tracks like "Barely Legal" would be cool if done by other bands. That's a good rock title, I like the connotation and imagery conjured up by that sort of thing, but in the hands of The Strokes? Might as well let The Wiggles have "Runnin' With the Devil." How about Teletubbies playing "Hammer Smashed Face"? That's what The Strokes sound like. I could see them being Barney the Purple Dinosaur's backing band.
